Healing with Love and Simple Chicken Noodle Soup

Over the course of the last two weeks every member of my family has been sick. Whenever someone starts with the sniffles my thoughts go immediately to a savory herbal homemade chicken noodle soup, with the thick, lovingly misshapen, doughy noodles my mother made for us when I was a child. And my text goes out to her 5 seconds later, “I know I’ve asked you this a million times but what is your noodle recipe?”

Her response is always the same but I never seem to write it down. I get too excited about making something comforting and warm for my family and the text gets lost in history.

But that’s the ironic part, the noodles are what made the soup stand out in the history of my childhood. Watching Mom rolling the dough covered in flour, pulling the sticky bits off her hands, knowing that even if she salted the broth a bit too much one time, or the noodles didn’t cook all the way through the time before that, that soup was full of her love for us, so it was always the best.

I want my family to feel that way about all my cooking, but most of all my chicken noodle soup. So here I am writing it down finally! I’ll let you in on the easy noodle recipe passed down through my family, as well as what I did this last time around to my simple soup to make even the stuffiest member able to taste the delicious broth.

Noodle Recipe

2 beaten eggs

1 cup flour

¼ tsp salt

Combine salt and flour. Make a slight well in the flour and add the eggs then combine. Add more flour as needed to be able to handle the dough. Roll flat to desired thickness with PLENTY of flour and cut with a pizza cutter, I try to stay at about ¼ inch thick but am never exact, just remember the thicker the noodle the longer the cook time. Cook 15- 20 min in boiling water then add or cook directly in the soup.

Simple Chicken Noodle Soup

1 ½ – 2lbs of boiled Chicken Breast

6-8 Carrots

1 Onion

Bundle of Rosemary, Sage, Thyme

4 tsps Chicken Bouillon

5 cups Water

Bring water to a boil on the stove. While water is boiling dice, slice, or cut up veggies to your families prefered size. Add bouillon to the boiling water and bring down to a simmer. At this point I added my carrots to make sure they cooked all the way, onions, and herbs to start infusing the broth with their flavor. Remember that stuffiest person? This is where we are thinking of them. I already had my chicken pre-cooked from a previous meal so I diced up my chicken and added it so that it too could start getting exposure to the herbs.

Now, I am a chronic crock pot user. Having a new baby it’s awesome to get things ready whenever I have a second and then be able to walk away and let dinner do it’s thing. You don’t have to do this – if you go the non-crock pot route I would suggest covering the soup and letting it simmer for 45 minutes or until the carrots are soft, then head to the noodles step.

If you are going the crock pot route go ahead and move everything into it at this point. Set it on high if you’re aiming for soup in 2-3 hours and low for soup in 4-6. I made my noodles and put them in the fridge so that once the crock pot contents were hot enough and we were close to dinner I could add them to cook, if you do this MAKE SURE THEY ARE DOSED WELL IN FLOUR or pulling them apart will be awful.

You can make your noodles now or if you made them ahead of time like me you’re already set.

Cooking the noodles is easy-peasy. Pull the noodle you need and drop it in! I try not to stir them in until they’ve been cooking for 3-5 minutes to make sure the dough stays in it’s shape. After all the noodles are added I’ll do a about a 15 minute simmer to ensure there is no raw centers to my noodles.

Remove the stems of the herbs you have used! We learned this the hard way as husband choked on a rosemary sprig that had been tucked under his veggies that decided to unfurl in his throat last week. Oops! Sorry hun!

Serve hot!

And there you have it, a simple soup that is sure to leave your family feeling loved and taken care of, whether on a cool fall evening or in the throws of the plague. What are some of your family traditions involving food? Do ties to your childhood affect what you cook for your family now?